A Question Of Identity
by Rainstorm Amaya Arianrhod
Summary: Ravenclaws are notoriously unreactionary. People from different houses find them studious, quiet, uncaring. Is this true? Or is there more to Ravenclaw than meets the eye?Disclaimer Don't recognize? Not mine.


I am a Ravenclaw. I am fifteen years old. I am a Chaser on the Quidditch team. My foremost ambition (believe me, I have many) is to one day be able to lift the Quidditch Cup and read my own name on it. I have spiky red-gold hair that refuses to grow and pale turquoise eyes. I wear silver braces. They hurt when I am upset or thinking. My name is Alana or 'little rock' Stone. That was my mother's idea of a poetic joke. I have never thought it very funny because it's more than a joke, it's prophetic. Everyone uses me as their staunch confidante and it gets quite wearing.

Oh, I know. A Ravenclaw should never complain. He or she should not show emotion. Writing things down for posterity is all very well, but colouring such accounts with one's own feelings is anathema. By doing so I am insulting the grand family name of Stone, my great-great-great-great-great-grandparents who were the archetypal damsel in distress and knight in shining armour. Well, have I got news for you: Alana Stone is fed up.

Perhaps this is not a good sign. Perhaps I am going mad. Well, I don't think so, somehow; surely my marks would have started to drop?

Professor McGonagall says I should have been a Gryffindor.

Professor Slughorn says I should have been a Slytherin.

Professor Sprout says I would have made a magnificent Hufflepuff.

Professor Flitwick has not, so far said anything; perhaps because I am a Ravenclaw.

Then again, perhaps I spend too much time in the company of Luna Lovegood, Hermione Granger, Ginny Weasley and Naira Grimoire. How's that for a strange quintet? Two Ravenclaws, two Gryffindors and a pureblood once-Slytherin? It's not our fault we were in almost all different houses.

Poor Naira. The Grimoires are Old Blood. She was properly sorted into Slytherin, but her amibitions were only her family's. She believed she would not stand out too much- no such luck. Naira is too kind, too blindly courageous.

Poor Hermione. Granger is a Mudblood name. She came to see me once in the summer holidays. My parents were so icily cold I took Hermione away before she started crying. She is a crusader by nature, but she is too soft-hearted, like Naira. She will lose that quality.

Poor Luna. Lovegoods are intellectuals. Luna's ideas are too strange for people to understand. Well, if they can't understand her ideas, why should they bother to understand her? Luna's brilliant. A star pupil. Not exactly nice, clever, of course, but, you know... wise.

I don't feel sorry for myself. Why should I? I'm reasonably pretty. I'm not unfortunately blemished, like Marietta Edgecombe, and I'm not and never have been heartbroken like Cho Chang. Cho never quite seems to be able to drag herself out of despair. Marietta hates her now. Cho self-harms; this I know all too well. Some days she isn't at Quidditch practice. I have not kept this from Naira, Hermione and Luna, but I have kept it from Hermione's friends Ron and Harry. Ron would be furious. Harry would beat himself up and then he wouldn't be so fun to play against even though it's not his fault. I might not be popular (feeling sorry for people doesn't get you far in Ravenclaw) but I have friends. I'm a regular fixture on the Quidditch team; I don't come and go.

My friends have brought me to the conclusion that Ravenclaw is really not so different from any of the other houses. We have ambition, for what is a Ravenclaw's unstoppable need to look into everything but an extension of ambition? We have courage. And tempers- well, some of us do. We are hardworking... just ask our teachers! ... and we can be loyal.

So where does this put us? Nowhere. In fact, certain of us Ravenclaws are the original misfits. We don't make friends easily. Few of us have something amounting to a social life. We try to conform- this is our ultimate failing. We will not step an inch out of line, we will not test the boundaries of our comfort zone, we will not dip a toe into deeper waters.

Oh, it's not as if we don't care. Of course we care. Sometimes we are too caring. How can we be too caring? We hide it. We hide it as far away as we can. Unfortunately, 'love, a cough and hiccups cannot be hid', and this breaks us apart and sends us sailing helpless into emotional purgatory with the same sort of skill Harry Potter uses in Defence Against the Dark Arts. In other words, with the greatest of ease.

And the worst thing is that while doing this helpless sailing into our own personal hells we look as if we don't care. Luna hears everything her detractors say. She never cries, never. Or perhaps I have simply never seen her do so. Cho Chang is called an ice queen. Perhaps they are right, but they do not know how thin that veneer of ice is. How close to shattering. It is possible that some people know, but not many. And they might have a secret pity for Cho Chang, but you can be sure they will never mention it.

Ravenclaws keep their feelings under wraps. Under those wraps as well is their wildness. They have it, but it is rusty and stiff. It needs the oil of visible rebellion, the elixir of life that is someone else behaving badly. I don't really care about a wonderful scholastic record, a pitch-perfect voice, skill in Potions or on a broom.

I want to know about the drive from which the scholastic record was born, the passion about singing from whence the perfect pitch came.

We can be good friends. I'd like to see a Hufflepuff, another Slytherin, perhaps another Gryffindor join me, Hermione, Naira and Luna. That would be terrific. And once we have achieved that, I'd like to see Cho Chang less depressed. She has, I know, accepted that Harry and Ginny are an item. Good luck to them; I know Ginny well and each has picked a winner.

Meanwhile, I am going put jeans and a blue and silver shirt on, just for the heck of it (my father would be proud. My mother would not. But it is scientifically impossible to make an omelette without breaking any eggs.) And I am going to use this sparkly blue thing Muggles call hair mascara to put a blue streak in my hair. Just one, for now. Hopefully this will teach other Ravenclaws that it is all right to (if you'll pardon the pun) let their hair down. At the worst, a few slightly indifferent acquaintances might drop me, but again with the omelettes.

And then, Hogwarts, we shall see.


End file.
